Posted on 03/09/2003 11:59:27 AM PST by DeaconBenjamin
In an address just over a year ago, President George W. Bush argued that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was, in some ways, a blessing in disguise. The surprise attack sunk or crippled eight battleships, the backbone of the US Pacific fleet, forcing the navy to rely on its flotilla of aircraft carriers to fight its way back across the ocean. The next 60 years saw the carrier battle group go from an afterthought to the centre of what would become the most powerful maritime force the world has ever seen.
America's military is once again set to make a virtue out necessity, this time in the mountains of northern Iraq. At stake is whether US ground forces really still need their tons of cold war-era hardware - Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, huge battlefield howitzers - or can rely instead on tactical fighter aircraft as the heavy guns needed to support advancing infantry.
It is a debate that has pitted senior air force officers against their counterparts in the army, with implications not only for how the war is prosecuted, but for the future of the US military.
"This always has implications for bragging rights after the war," says Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "More importantly, it has implications for the budget after the war."
With an invasion apparently imminent, military planners are still wringing their hands over Turkey's decision, at least for the time being, to prevent the taskforce of 62,000 US troops and boatloads of heavy weaponry from assembling on Turkey's eastern flank.
Publicly, Mr Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and General Tommy Franks, head of US central command and the man who would lead forces into battle, have insisted that failing to get permission to use the Turkish bases is only a minor distraction.
"We've got contingencies in place, should our troops not be allowed to come through Turkey," Mr Bush said at a press conference this week. "That won't cause any more hardships for our troops."
But behind the tightly sealed doors of the Pentagon, people close to the war planning say a debate is raging over just how important it is to get the heavy forces, led by the 4th infantry division, into northern Iraq. Air force officers have been arguing that lightly armed infantry backed by precision air power are sufficient - indeed preferable - for the task at hand, while the army remains desperate to get at least a brigade's worth of tanks and heavy guns into the region.
People familiar with the plans for the north say the role of forces in the area has been misunderstood. Rather than serving as the top claw in a pincer movement closing on Baghdad, the troops would have three main objectives: securing oilfields in and around Kirkuk; preventing violence between Kurds, Turks and Iraqis; and keeping Republican Guard units based in Kirkuk and Mosul from retreating to Baghdad.
If those goals were quickly accomplished, elements of the northern force could also be used for an assault on Tikrit, the town 100 miles north-east of Baghdad where Saddam Hussein was born and which still serves as a recruiting ground for the regime's loyalists. A defeat for Iraqi troops in Tikrit could break the will of remaining hold-outs.
The initial plan for the region called for the 4th infantry division to unload all its tanks, personnel carriers and attack helicopters at the Turkish port of Iskenderun, move them by rail to the eastern border, where they would invade through mountain passes in Kurdish-controlled territory.
It was an army-centric plan - put together by Gen Franks, an army artillery veteran - which would showcase the service's most high-tech unit, the so-called "digital division" that has received all of the army's most advanced hardware.
Barring a Turkish reprieve, however, the northern campaign will now look very different. A division of light infantry - possibly the 101st airborne, now en route to Kuwait, or the 173rd airborne, based in northern Italy - would be airlifted in, securing airbases in Kurdish areas and relying on Humvee troop carriers and helicopters to move south into Mosul and Kirkuk.
There is little dispute, even among most air force leaders, that the preferred choice would be the heavy choice. It would allow a greater margin for error and would rely on tried and proven tactics.
But those are the very tactics Mr Rumsfeld has been trying to change since his return to the Pentagon two years ago. To him, the army remains too slow, too hard to deploy and too wedded to cold war doctrines. Indeed the first - and, to date, only - big weapon system Mr Rumsfeld has killed is the Crusader, the army's next-generation battlefield cannon, a 40-ton behemoth that, like the Abrams tank, would have been difficult to move by aircraft.
In some respects, the debate over what forces are needed in northern Iraq is an extension of the debate over what won the first Gulf war. Some senior air force officials remain embittered by the lack of credit they received for their achievements in Operation Desert Storm. The heroes that emerged from 1991 were all army leaders, notably Generals Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf.
One defence official recently told of an air force two-star general who still gets angry every time he walks into the Pentagon and sees a map of Iraq on the wall, illustrating the advance of land forces through Kuwait. In his view, the Gulf war was effectively over before ground forces ever joined the battle.
For like-minded officers, the northern Iraq campaign could illustrate the superiority of air power and its ability to lead the much-touted revolution in military affairs. Even army officials acknowledge that the new generation of Apache Longbow helicopters, which began delivery in 1997, have unprecedented anti-tank abilities, with the ability to send more than a dozen Hellfire missiles each at separate targets within seconds of each other - from miles away. The Apache, coupled with smart bombs called in via global positioning system co-ordinates, should be able to beat back any heavy armour the Iraqis can muster in the north, air force advocates argue, and can be flown in three at a time on C-17 transports, which can only carry one 70-ton Abrams at a time.
The army, however, is reluctant to let go of its own guns, even though it acknowledged years ago that the Abrams is a relic of the past. A full army brigade is being equipped with a lighter ground fighting vehicle, the Stryker, although it is still being tested and will not be used in Iraq. The army has also committed to spending billions of dollars to get its so-called future combat system - which would be led by a tank-like vehicle less than a third of the weight of an Abrams - into the field by the end of the decade.
Still, officials who have spoken with senior army officers about the Turkish decision say they remain skittish about the prospect of going into battle in northern Iraq without at least a brigade's worth of tanks, which would amount to about 100 Abrams. It would be a Herculean effort, given that the air force only has 120 C-17s in service, each of which would have to be accompanied by a squadron of fighters.
"The army will say to the air force: 'We always have the fire power with us if we have tanks. Are you always going to be there to support us?" says Mr Krepinevich.
But unless the army can convince Gen Franks that the airlift is worth doing, or Turkey changes its mind, the air force may well demonstrate that it can defeat two Republican Guard divisions in the north without any heavy ground weapons. That might just finally prove that air power is the future of the US military.
As technology advances, the cost of defeating older technology gets cheaper and cheaper, and the pendulum will swing back and forth between competing offensive and defensive systems. Nothing lasts forever, and some future adversary will develop his own dirt cheap EMP weapons to counter our technological advantages.
The war may be "over" due to the air campaign, but it's never won until you have 19-year-old GIs wandering the enemy's streets with M16s. Despite our awesome air and naval power, it's still infantry "boots on the ground" that defines winning the war.
The USAF performed flawlessly against one of the most inept armies in history in Iraq. Airpower alone did not provide an easy victory in Kosovo. We cannot assume that all future enemies will be as incompetent and clueless as Iraq.
The biggest reason for "light" forces is the inability or unwillingness of the USAF to provide enough outside/overweight airlift. Everything becomes sized to the lowest common denominator, the C-130. And whether it's a C-130, C-17, or C-5, hauling "ash and trash" for the Army is not very glamorous, or a real career-enhancer. The USAF has a fighter-plane mentality, but not enough that it would let the Army control its cargo fleet or A-10s.
And no matter who flies the planes, the only 24-hour-a-day all-weather instant firepower controlled by the Army is tube artillery. The infantry likes having something bigger than its own mortars to back them up when the Air Force, or even their own AH-64s, are grounded, or stretched thin.
I would love to see all this "light" stuff work miracles, but so far a lot of it involves wishful thinking, and cooperative enemies like Iraq. If it works as advertised, the GI will gladly give up the "legacy" weapons systems. But ground combat has to be inherently conservative because of the many American lives involved.
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